Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to network-based computer systems having (i) data acquisition devices, such as those having radio frequency identification (RFID) readers that acquire RFID data from RFID tags, and (ii) data access devices that receive the data from the data acquisition devices via a communications network, such as the Internet or other wide- or local-area network.
Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
FIG. 1 is a simplified, high-level block diagram of a conventional network-based RFID data acquisition system 100 that uses a traditional client/server architecture. The data acquisition system 100 comprises a network server 110 that communicates via a communications (comm) network 120, such as the Internet, with the two represented clients: an RFID data acquisition device 130 and an RFID data access device 140.
The RFID data acquisition device 130 includes an RFID reader (not shown) that communicates wirelessly with a near-by RFID tag 132 to receive RFID data, such as the unique RFID number for the tag. The acquisition device 130 transmits the acquired RFID data to the network server 110 via the comm network 120, and the network server 110 stores the RFID data into the network database 112. This flow of RFID data is represented in FIG. 1 with solid arrows. To provide the RFID data to the RFID data access device 140, the network server 110 retrieves the stored RFID data from the network database 112 and transmits the retrieved RFID data to the access device 140 via the comm network 120. This flow of RFID data is represented in FIG. 1 with dotted arrows. The latency associated with the data acquisition and retrieval scheme of FIG. 1 can be problematic for certain applications involving real-time data, in which the value of the data relates to its immediacy. In addition, in some situations, access to the network server 110 by the acquisition device 130 and/or the access device 140 might not be available.
Although not explicitly represented in FIG. 1, in addition to the RFID reader, the RFID data acquisition device 130 also has a controller that runs (i) RFID reader software that supports communication with the RFID reader to receive the acquired RFID data and (ii) client software that supports communication with the network server 110 via the comm network 120 to transmit the RFID data. The RFID data access device 140 also runs RFID reader software that enables the access device to communicate with the network server 110 to receive the RFID data acquired by the acquisition device 130 and retrieved from the network database 112. Different RFID readers from different manufacturers require different RFID reader software applications to be run on the controller of the RFID data acquisition device 130 and on the RFID data access device 140. If the RFID reader in the acquisition device 130 is replaced by an RFID reader of another manufacturer, then the RFID reader software in both the acquisition device 130 and the access device 140 typically need to be replaced by RFID reader software of the second manufacturer.